symphonie_fantastique.md

Symphonie Fantastique

Symphonie Fantastique is a program symphony composed by Hector Berlioz.

Meta

Originally the symphony was paired with a story meant to be read along with as the symphony played as is typical in the program symphony style. Later in life, Hector Berlioz excluded the program completely. Some suspect he regretted this aspect of the work.

Context

Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral."

Movements

Each title is translated to english. Each description is a paraphrasing program passed out to the audience before the symphony played.

• “Daydreams - Passions"

  • The listener hears the motif “idée fixe” while the character is introduced to "the beloved" - the woman who inspires their creative passions.
  • The beloved is referred to in the musical notation as a named motif “idée fixe” which translates literally to “an idea or desire that dominates the mind; an obsession.”

• “A ball"

  • The artist goes to many places, meets many people - but still envisions his beloved and the passion it invokes.

• ”Scene in the country"

  • The artist feels some calm in a peaceful setting as a pastoral duet happens to sing nearby. But he has missed his beloved.
  • What if his beloved betrays him? The song transitions to sounds of rolling thunder before ending.

• “March to the scaffold"

  • The artist attempts suicide with opium and experiences hallucinations.
  • He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts.
  • At the end of the march, the first four bars of the *idée fixe* (the beloved) reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.